


Of Course I Can

by stargazinggirl773



Category: The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Again, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, lot's of blood, not really set in anytime relative to the books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 13:23:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13388706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stargazinggirl773/pseuds/stargazinggirl773
Summary: Valentine and Jonathan are back, with an army of blood thirsty demons.  In a failed mission to protect a pack of werewolves, Alec and Jace are in shock, soaked in blood, and unresponsive as they and other shadow hunters and down worlders wait for instructions and guidance.





	Of Course I Can

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Cassandra Clare owns the mortal instruments, definitely not me.
> 
> Notes: I'm starting to think I like gore, but let me know if you want to see more fluff. Once again, Clary is used in the sole purpose of narrating, since I find her basically useless, especially in being able to console Jace as u will see. Sorry to all you Clace shippers.
> 
> Also, as a personal note from a fangirl, I hate the movie and Shadow hunter TV show, so to all readers who r interested in knowing, I have very a very diff imagination of how the characters looks like, especially Alec and Magnus. Well that's it, enjoy!

* * *

Luke’s living room was dim, and the normally safe atmosphere that Clary had grown up with, many days spent playing and reading the hundreds of books in the book keepers library, was gone, erased so completely that Clary doubted the very existence of those moments in her childhood.  

She could remember laughing, and spending hours curled up in a worn but cozy sofa near the back, time streaming by like a river as she became totally absorbed in novels of adventure and romance. The late afternoon sun had filtered in through the large open windows near the front of the store, rays of gold lighting up the tiny specks of dust dancing through the air into sparkling spots of glitter.

Now, however, lights were flickering, most were off, even, and piles of thick, fragile books lay strewn on the floor, ripped open and discarded.  Most of the towering book cases lining either side of the werewolf’s store empty, their sleek wooden shelves laying smashed into pieces on the dirty carpet, which was stained with red splotches.

For the mundanes, everything would appear intact from the outside, almost as if it had never happened at all.  But in Clary’s reality, part of the display window had been smashed, and only the last few letters “e’s Books” were remaining from _Luke’s Books._

The newly turned shadowhunter felt nauseous as she and the other part angels made their way past the rubble, and deeper into the store, where Luke lived.  

Valentine had emerged out of the dawn, when the sun was bleeding the sky red, weeks prior.  He and Jonathan were alive, somehow, miraculously. They had begun their mission once again, and had so far slaughtered hundreds of innocent downworlders with their tumultuous and cascading demon army.  There were so many of the devils that it looked like an ominous, black storm cloud, rumbling and shifting and reshaping itself,  the darkness interrupted only by the many red and green dots, along with slivers of luminous silver, the eyes and claws and teeth of the demons. 

Many shadowhunter institutes had already been obliterated, and been reduced to piles of rubble, including the New York institute, and the shadowhunters of New York, along with quiet a few terrified downworlders, had come to take refuge here.  Dozens of runes of swirling black scorch marks were burned outside and inside the building, or what was left of it, but Clary wasn’t sure how long Valentine would be held off.

With a muffled thunder of footsteps, the crowd made its way up the swirling metal staircase and into Luke’s loft.  There were some more sofas arranged in a semi circle around a small fireplace, but other than that the shadowhunters were left to either stand or sit on the wooden floor.  

She heard the sky rumble again faintly as she took her seat beside Jace, and for a split second she thought it was going to rain, before remembering the demons.

Rain would’ve been a blessing though, and the fresh water would’ve been able to wash away the blood soaking the streets that mundanes were spared from seeing.  

Gradually, conversations began to fill the room, increasing in volume from whispers, and ranging in emotions from anxiousness to rage to fearfulness.  

Many of the downworlders present had their unusual eyes wide open, looking around frantically for some invisible foe, many with unusual colouring such as purple and bright greens, or with multiple pupils.  One of the warlocks, a short, small girl with pink skin and white hair cut in a pixie cut, reminded her of a spider, eight small black pupils in each individual eye.  Tear marks were streaked down her face, tainting her, literally, rosy cheeks into a dirty, muddy brown colour.  

Clary looked away,  and buried her face into Jace’s arm.  After a moment, he mechanically shifted to put his bloodied arm around her, light and stiff.  Her eyebrows furrowed and she moved against his side to look up at him.

 He was staring off into the distance, breathing shallowly, unmoving.  Parts of his radiant, golden locks were matted with blood into a darker brown, and streaks of it was dripping down his handsome face.

For the past week, Clary and the rest of the New York shadowhunters had been working together to provide at least some force between the downworlders and death that the demons had to plow through, and many had died in the process.

A particular mission had been exceptionally bloody and catastrophic.  She, along with Isabelle, Simon, and several other shadowhunters, had been busy gathering multiple injured faeries into secure location underground, north of the city.  Meanwhile, a couple of shadowhunters, including Jace and Alec, had left to help fight against Valentine and his forces by defending a small clan of young and helpless werewolves, trapped in a warehouse somewhere in Brooklyn.  

It had been a blood bath.  All of the werewolves had been ripped apart and obliterated so quickly and so thoroughly that it must have essentially started raining the maroon coloured liquid, judging from the amount of fluid covering the handful of surviving shadowhunters, including the pair of parabatai and an older man named Joseph.   

Clary followed the golden eyed shadowhunter’s line of sight to where Alec was sitting across the room, his back against the wall, with his head tipped back and his eyes closed, masking his brilliant, bright blue eyes.

He had his legs, clad in the tough, signature shadowhunter armour, partially drawn up, his arm resting on one.  Magnus was sitting beside him, and appeared to be talking quietly to him, with no response.

It felt like a stone had dropped in her gut, and she breathed in quickly.

“Jace?” Clary attempted tentatively, pushing some of her tangled red hair out of her eyes.

The normally sarcastic, over confident boy, usually prone to making simultaneously snide and defensive comments, was utterly quiet, as silent as his parabatai.

She breathed out shakily, and decidedly looked away from the comatose boy.  Instead, she gently rested her head on his shoulder again, and upon receiving no reaction from him, looked over at his parabatai, hidden slightly by shadows and among the bent, terrified heads of other downworlders.

Unlike werewolves and vampires, warlocks possessed _magic,_ coming in various ranges of dark, turmolous blues to bright, electric orange, in addition to the way it fluctuated from sizzling hot flames and electric bolts of scorching shafts.

However, the high warlock of Manhattan seemed to be powerless in whatever had taken over his boyfriend, and Clary clenched her small fists tightly, her heart panging.

Beneath the mess of ink black hair, wavy in the humidity of a summer in New York, cobalt eyes stared dazedly into another world, shutting entirely for short periods of time.  

The blood of the butchered werewolves was also occasionally sprayed along his body in long streaks of scarlet.  One particularly thick stripe was streaked diagonally along his face, bringing out the colour of his eyes and the light pinkness of his still lips.  

The fire crackled along the wall of the little living space, and more surviving downworlders and shadowhunters alike emerged from the staircase, seeking refuge, instruction, and guidance.  

She heard the thunder again and _wished_ that it really was thunder, no matter how much she hated the rain.

Magnus was turned towards him, lips moving slowly as his cat-like eyes searched his unresponsive boyfriend, placing a careful, long fingered hand upon his shoulder, most likely soaking it in the blood staining Alec’s black gear.  Who knew how much worse, or even traumatizing, it might have been had the attire been white, Clary thought to herself, shuddering.

As she watched from her perch upon the blonde’s boys hard, stiff shoulder, she could see Alec’s eyes move a little, and his jaw begin to clench.

Magnus, apparently also aware of this gradual change of his response in Alec, judging from the way his golden green eyes widened, tightened his hand encouragingly upon Alec’s shoulder and continued to speak slowly, making sure to look directly in the half angel’s stricken eyes.

Clary couldn’t tell how much time had passed, her bones liquid and her muscles aching when she saw the light return to the sapphire orbs.

Jace was just as rigid as ever along her side, and  the noise in Luke’s living room had increasingly grown louder over the time that had passed, slow moving as honey as they waited for Clave officials to arrive at the “makeshift” base.   

Her heart beat wildly however, as she observed the progress Magnus seemed to be making to draw Alec out of whatever nightmare of the past he had been trapped in.   

Gradually, the eldest Lightwood managed to turn his head toward the warlock, meeting his eyes with an obvious struggle, and smearing the beige wall behind with red.  

Magnus’ lips moved again- since they had stopped for the amount of time that his boyfriend took to drag up the energy to look at him- and Alec’s eyes shined, setting loose a single tear to clear a path through the mess of blood on his cheek, leaving a trail of porcelain white.

He clenched his eyes shut tight then, and Magnus gently moved his hand from the boy’s shoulder to wipe them away.

Clary had to look away,  the cold feeling of shame and guilt flooding through her veins at her own failure of comforting the Shadowhunter next to her.

Many heads turned and tilted up, at the sound of heavy footsteps sounding on the metal steps of the staircase, the booming voice of the head consul of the American shadowhunters, Nathan Stormbrewer, familiar and full of authority, as he ascended. He appeared to be talking with two, equally tall, middle aged female shadowhunters, with warm brown eyes, faces littered with scratches and other war wounds.

A sense of relief was felt throughout the room, and many shoulders sagged at the presence of someone to tell them what to do during such a terrifying, helpless period of their incredibly long lives, for the vampires present.

Clary was, however, too preoccupied with staring across the space, unaware of the arrival of such an important shadowhunter.

Her emerald green eyes were focused solely on the sight for the two heads bent close, foreheads resting together.  Both Alec and Magnus’ eyes were closed as they sat, half facing the other.  Magnus’ hand was still placed lightly on Alec’s bloody but elegant high cheekbone, lips moving slower than before, and Alec’s hand, a beautiful example of modern art: white, speckled and streaked with red, was clasped tightly on the warlocks’ wrist.  

Maybe there was hope for them all.

**Author's Note:**

> That last line was a little too sappy but whatever. Don't forget to comment, I live off them ;), and many of u guys offer great ideas to future fics. Thxxx!!


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